


Your Infinity is Too Small

by trufflemores



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 19:13:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14315331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trufflemores/pseuds/trufflemores
Summary: Gazing out into the darkness, the Black Flash illuminates,Existence is so infinitesimally brief that mathematically, it precludes itself.Or: the Black Flash decides to step into the story, and DeVoe leaves their meeting a different man.





	Your Infinity is Too Small

**Author's Note:**

> Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for claiming that the Universe was grander than his peers believed it to be. He stressed that the stars were suns like our own rather than mere points of light on a black canvas surrounding the Earth. His words helped destroy the narrative that the Earth was the central point of existence. Perhaps apocryphally, to a crowd of naysayers he shouted, "Your God is too small!"
> 
> My love for "The Flash" remains, but I find myself craving something different, something a little more ruthless, a little more blunt, when it comes to The Thinker. And so I brought in my own interceder, who I would call neither a villain nor a hero, to provide an alternative perspective. Plus, I read a great deal of nonfiction science books (17 this year alone!) and so I find myself craving a more scientific outlook than the show provides.
> 
> This fic may not be easy to understand. It's a logistical puzzle, and like a Rubik's cube, it's meant to be turned over and over, to be dwelled upon rather than consumed in one sitting. I hope you find something worth your time in it. 
> 
> The core message I feel is safe to disclose even at the outset: the aims of a villain, who proclaims to be something great, are truly nothing compared to the scope of Everything. Conquering one world is humbling against the scope of the Universe; conquering even the entire Multiverse is still fool's play. Evil never triumphs in the grand scheme. It cannot overcome infinity. It will be washed away.

The Black Flash rests a hand on The Thinker's chair.  _Come with me,_ It commands.

Clifford DeVoe does not voice a protest. He has no time to. The clawed hand curls, and they vanish together into the ether. Gazing out into the darkness, the Black Flash illuminates,  _Existence is so infinitesimally brief that mathematically, it precludes itself. A fraction of a bulk that does not exist is not a fraction. An infinite pie does not exist; an infinitesimal slice cannot be taken. Any attempt to do so will fail: for whatever fraction of the infinite pie you attempt to mathematically take, you will find the slice grows smaller, infinitely smaller than the presumed whole, until it cannot exist at all. There is no such thing as a slice of infinity. Infinity is grander than existence can dare to understand._

_You know that there are an infinite number of zeroes in every number; to divide infinity into slices is as fruitless as dividing any quantity by zero. It does not work. There is no way to measure how many zeroes are in the number five, or twenty, or ten thousand. From a relatively young age, we are taught that the algorithms will reject any attempts to divide by zero. We have taught the algorithms how to do this. We have told them not to chase after an unanswerable question. They are mathematical, logical, perfectly rational. They embrace the concept of a non-answer being the only solution without lying awake at night wondering how the Universe, undivided, can contain such a simple and profound problem: nothing can be divided by zero._

_Infinity cannot be divided by any number. It is always infinity. We can torture it into mathematical sets to allow us to grasp the idea of numbers that trail off into the distance, farther than we could ever hope to walk on a human timescale, but we fail to capture the breadth of the idea. We fail to see it as the monster it is, shrinking it down to a bulk sum in our minds, like the number ten thousand, plus one, or ten million, plus one, or ten novemnonagintillion plus one. Whatever number you like, add one unit to it, and you have already broken the algorithm. Infinity spans beyond the bulk. Infinity is beyond space and time and any conceptualization of either thing._

_Now._ The Black Flash takes a seat on a chair that materializes, a wooden rocking chair that belongs on Joe West's porch during the warmer months.  _You are to us what the number one is to infinity. To analogize you into an ant is to treat you like the entire Universe. To analogize you to even an electron, invisible to the human eye, is still to scale you up to the weight of the entire Multiverse. There is no quantity you have that is sufficiently tiny – infinitesimally tiny – to convey how miniscule you are to us, how truly, absurdly small you are. You are nothing._

Rocking slowly in the chair, feet never leaving the ground, the Black Flash says,  _It is hubristic to believe that you can amount to anything more than an error in an algorithm programmed to read sums grander than the human mind could ever hope to understand. Your infinities are too small. Your entire concept of what can be is overwhelmed by how brief and finite your own existence is, tainted by what you think is the grandest of all scales._

_You, who proclaim to be a physicist, have become the demon Laplace contrived to count the atoms in the universe and know their past, present, and future, to discern from their positions and velocities where they had been, where they are, and where they will be. You, who proclaim to be a physicist, should know that this is as futile as dividing by zero. You can know the velocity or the position with great precision, but never both. As soon as you measure one, you negate the other. You can try to learn all the knowledge that there is at any one moment, but it will fall so short of what you would deem truth that all you have done is reinforce a preconceived lie. You have tricked yourself into believing that you have deduced every possibility, that you have created a framework of Existence. What you have done is reinforce that paradoxes cannot be broken by humans, and Existence is so paradoxical it should not even be._

_You have donned a fool's cap and constructed a toy throne to elevate your self-conceived importance, but you are no closer to becoming a god than we are. And we are not God._ Rocking in Its chair, the Black Flash holds out a hand, and a mug appears in Its palm. Lifting the mug to Its mouth, the Black Flash drinks deeply, steaming coffee flooding Its sense-memories.  _We are more like an algorithm divorced from humanity, a computer your kind never built. We exist beyond your realm. We were not born in space or time; we do not belong in the multiverse. Yet we exist, and so we are subject to the same smallness that is our Existence within infinity. We know our place._

It alights red eyes upon Clifford DeVoe, seated in a chair identical to Its.  _We are greater than your multiverse will ever be, and yet we are still nothing compared to the infinite beyond Existence. We span the breadth of Existence: we are here at the beginning before your kind, and we are here at the end eons after your kind has expired. The strange thing, DeVoe,_ and here, the Black Flash's tone acquires an almost conversational edge, a lighter, more playful tone,  _is that I have contemplated my own presence and realized that there is an even more ghastly paradox attached to it. We exist at the end. Yet we exist presently, continuously. We have not ceased to exist, as the end would inevitably imply. If we are present at all points in time, then how can we be here now? Our presence should have been extinguished the very instant it was born._

_The infinite pie cannot be sliced, and yet the Multiverse and its many iterations are proof that the paradox is still alive and well. We all exist. Like Zeno's paradox of motion, Existence is proof that the infinite allows for many apparent contradictions. And like all algorithms, we stumble over these ones, to the point where we can no longer compare even your incomprehensibly miniscule presence to anything less than our own. We are on a scale your kind cannot comprehend, and yet we are nothing next to Totality, whatever is beyond Existence. We are truly infinitesimal, and so it becomes somewhat contradictory to look upon you as anything less than an equal quantity._

The Black Flash does not blink, does not even open Its mouth to speak. It is perhaps Its most arresting quality, aside from the black suit and the burning white eyes. Its perfect stillness is extraordinary. And strange, in light of the Speed Force It encapsulates. But, walking contradictions are what It embraces, what It is. It is almost fitting that It holds Itself perfectly still as It addresses DeVoe.

Even in the Speed Force, DeVoe seems barely real to It, an outline of a person filled with darkness in between, a husk, a mortal in an immortal space lacking definition. It is so easy to divorce Itself from such creations, a reality that seems simulated next to the Speed Force's grandeur. And still the Speed Force would appear as pale before the higher entity encapsulating whatever is beyond Existence. It is the knowledge that It is not all that keeps the Black Flash humble, and charitable, and quite thoroughly consumed with interest in human affairs.

 _Human thought evades us,_ the Black Flash goes on,  _as do most things in the Multiverse. We were not born in it; we will not die with it. We grasp it only through the connections we make with others. We know what every aspect of your life is like, and still we have never experienced it the way you have. Love, to us, is not an emotion. Love is an idea, a tendency to return often to a thing that elevates us, that compels us to seek more of the thing that inspires it. Hate is also not an emotion. Hate is a conflict of interests that, once arisen, must be resolved, or it grows to consume even the love._

_You are a conflict of interest._

It is here that the Black Flash pauses, for a very long time, permitting DeVoe an opportunity to speak. It knows that DeVoe will not take it, but It relishes the opportunity to drink deeply from Its refilled mug, to listen to the distant rumble of thunder promising rain. In another lifetime, this was a summer's eve with a summer's storm on the horizon, a peaceable time It enjoys revisiting.

_You threaten the things we love. You attempt to claim things that do not belong to you. You work towards a goal that is so irrelevant to the grand scheme of Totality that we feel something approaching pity for you. What will you accomplish, DeVoe, when you raze the ground, making a small universe that much smaller? What hill will you stand upon and proclaim to be a God, unaware that the gods do not reside in even the highest mountains you can conceive?_

_Totality will not care that you conquered, that you vanquished, that you maimed and slaughtered other people. We were there when you killed. We carried them in our arms._ The Black Flash halts and extends Its arms to either side; Its wingspan, if measured, would approach eight feet, proportional to Its gigantic height.  _We held them until they vanished, held them until Totality claimed them. We don't know where they go. What comes after Existence, DeVoe? You claim to be a God now. Tell us. We are eager to know._

Folding Its arms inwards once more, the Black Flash rocks Its chair, creaking quietly. Its gaze remains outward as the storm builds, another rumble of thunder filling the space. It's beautiful. Enormous. Unfathomably primordial, yet instantly recognizable for its present nature. And still heard even far, far away from this singular point in spacetime.  _What comes after?_ It repeats, but DeVoe cannot answer.

At last, It says,  _Humble yourself and you will survive. Carry on in the same manner and you will destroy yourself. It does not matter if you reign for ten thousand years and conquer the entire Multiverse. You will still die. We know this. We have carried you to the ether already, an uncountable number of times. We are ready, DeVoe, to take you to Totality, where you may find the answers to the true questions that we cannot. And when you confront Totality, we know you will understand just how little your tyranny mattered, how pitiful your desire to rule the world was._

The mug vanishes from the Black Flash's hand. Looking right at DeVoe, It pronounces,  _Existence is nearly indistinguishable from nothingness, and yet it is all that we are, and know, and understand. Why waste it? Why choose to make a small universe smaller? We are infinitesimal, and yet we still are. And we are together, kin in some strange way, beings which Exist. It is extraordinary._

_Don't waste the extraordinary._

Without warning, the Black Flash grasps DeVoe's hand and returns the man to his own universe. The Black Flash then releases DeVoe in seemingly the same instant, never fully appearing or disappearing in the multiverse, before returning to Its dark, quiet kingdom. It takes a seat in Its wooden chair and begins rocking again, listening intently for the next rumble of thunder in the distance.

It knows that DeVoe will crumple under the weight of Its words, that things will steer far off-course, catching even Its own kin off-guard. But even the chaos of interference is worthwhile, for events will transpire in a way that removes an iota of suffering from that small universe that would otherwise have existed. The Black Flash sips more coffee and wonders if it qualifies as charity work to intervene in mortal affairs without prompting. It wonders if it isn't dangerous to intercede, if it isn't foolish for trying.

But It was human once, too, and It still wears the same face. Garbed in the Black Flash's royal black robes, Barry-as-the-Black-Flash sits on the porch and keeps rocking, basking in Its old life, Its remembered life, Its cherished life. As a human, It rarely dared to interfere so grandly. But having tasted the infinite, It doesn't shy from such interventions so readily. Instead, It ponders them, and It embraces the possibility that even Death Itself can somehow improve the lives of the living, if only by reminding them of their own mortality.

 _A cruel kindness_ , It muses, and watches the storm with golden eyes, wondering if It will ever meet Totality.

_Humble us. Show us there is something beyond us, beyond the darkness._

And still there is only Speed Force, and the Black Flash finds Itself at peace with the stillness.


End file.
